Husband of San Bernardino Shooting Victim Supports Apple in Legal Battle with FBI

Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook says the demand from a U.S. judge to help the FBI break into an iPhone recovered from one of the San Bernardino shooters threatened the security of Apple's customers and had "implications far beyond the legal case at hand." CARLO ALLEGRI - REUTERS

The husband of one of the San Bernardino shooting victims has written a court letter in support of Apple in its legal tussle with the Justice Department.

In the letter posted on Apple’s website on Thursday and addressed to U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym, Salihin Kondoker explained how his wife survived three gunshots that occurred on the day of the December attacks.

Kondoker wrote that he was frustrated with the lack of information provided by the FBI during briefings with the victims and their families. He expressed frustration at learning that Apple (AAPL) did not want to comply with a court order requiring the company to build custom software to circumvent its encryption and security features on a San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone.

The Justice Department has argued the custom software would allow law enforcement to more easily obtain information from the iPhone without the possibility that the data could be erased via Apple’s security measures.

After learning more about the case, Kondoker said he is now in favor of Apple and agrees with the tech giant that “this software the government wants them to use will be used against millions of other innocent people.” Kondoker also said he does not believe there is “any valuable information on this phone.”

From the letter:

Finally, and the reason for my letter to the court, I believe privacy is important and Apple should stay firm in their decision. Neither I, nor my wife, want to raise our children in a world where privacy is the tradeoff for security. I believe this case will have a huge impact all over the world. You will have agencies coming from all over the world to get access to the software the FBI is asking Apple for. It will be abused all over to spy on innocent people.

The letter follows news reports in late February that several victims of the attacks were planning to file a legal brief in support of the federal government. A formal federal judge who is representing an undisclosed number of victims told Reuters that his clients want more information on how the attacks occurred and why they were targeted.

For more on Apple and the FBI, check out our video:

A number of large technology companies are also publicly siding with Apple. Roughly 40 companies—including Facebook (FB), Microsoft (MSFT), and Google (GOOG)—are expected to file court briefs showing support for Apple by the end of Thursday.

AT&T (T) also filed a court document in favor of Apple, according to a USA Today report. The report said that the telecommunications giant wrote, “As a company committed to both, the critical issue to AT&T is whether those interests will be balanced on an ad hoc basis by judges presiding over individual cases or by Congress providing a clear, uniform legal framework for all participants in the new digital economy.

Those companies join civil rights groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, and digital rights groups like the App Association, which have also filed court letters in favor of Apple.

Story updated at 11:40 AM PST with more information on tech companies supporting Apple